I even lost my lunch box on more than one occasion, sometimes with my lunch still in it.

I joined the Navy at 17, and continued losing stuff.

One memorable night, on helm duty, it was the stern light on the ship ahead in a convoy through minefields. Whenever we had lifeboat drills, I could never find the boat to which I’d been assigned. And I may have been the only sailor who came home without a seabag. I lost mine on a train ride back from San Francisco.

Back in civilian life, I lost a briefcase containing all kinds of confidential interoffice memos. I had a frozen lock on the driver’s door, and I stuck the briefcase on the car roof while I jiggered it loose with a key. By the time I got inside, I’d forgotten all about it, and it flew off in a winter wind somewhere between Worcester and West Boylston.

We took in a movie one night, and found ourselves later in the theater parking lot in the middle of a blizzard. Where we’d parked escaped us. One car after another left the scene, and we were finally out there on the tundra alone, resigned to the terrible realization that our car was more than just lost.

It was stolen.

I don’t know how many umbrellas I’ve lost in my time. I quit buying them after a while. Now I keep a rain poncho handy — or did, at least, ’til I lost it. And I’ve lost more combs than I have umbrellas, by a factor of probably 10.

At a spring-training baseball game in Florida a few years ago, I bought hot dogs to take back to our seats, and managed to leave my wallet behind at the vendor’s stand. I made my way to the Lost and Found Department in the ballpark, but the vendor had already packed up and left, most likely with my money and all my credit cards.

I lost another wallet once and discovered it a year later wedged behind the back seat, the only good thing I can recall ever happening in my 1964 Rambler wagon, which used more oil than Air Force One.

There was a time when I had a valuable little doohickey you could put on your car keys and when you clapped your hands it beeped, leading you to the place they were hiding. Naturally, I lost that too.

I realize it could be a lot worse. Heck, I could be Mitt Romney or the Red Sox — or Hostess Twinkies for that matter.